Paranormal
The year was 1928. The city, Kobe, Japan. A middle-aged English couple, the Lamberts, stood in front of a junk shop window. "That's what I'd like," said Marie Lambert, pointing to a tiny statuette of a half-naked fat man seated in a cushion. She recognized the laughing man as Ho-Tei, the Japanese god of Good Luck. "Let's find out what he costs," said her husband, as they walked into the shop. They were pleasantly surprised to find that the figurine was cheap, even though it was made of ivory. It seemed almost too good to be true. Back on their cruise ship the Lamberts examined their purchase carefully. The statuette had the creamy color of old ivory and was beautifully carved. As far as they could see, its only minor imperfection was a small underneath, plugged neatly with an ivory peg. If the carver had used the base of an elephant's tusk for the statue, which was possible, the tiny hold would be natural as the point where the nerve of the animal's tooth had ended. Altogether, the statue seemed to be one of those rare bargains that tourists dream about. The Lamberts hoped the presence of the "Laughing Buddha," as Ho-Tei is sometimes called, would ensure good luck for the remainder of their voyage.
Ho-Tei was originally a sixth century Buddhist monk who devoted his life to helping the poor, taking special care of children. Statuettes of Ho-Tei, who later became a god, show him holding in his right hand a string of beads or a fan and in his left hand a sack. Sometimes, a small child is hanging onto his back or sitting on his shoulder, illustrating a legend that he once carried a child to safety across a dangerously flooded river. The legend of St. Christopher, who features in many good luck charms in the West as a protector of travelers, is believed to be a Christianized version of the legend of Ho-Tei.
Marie Lambert packed the statuette in her suitcase. On the second day out, on route to Manila, Mrs. Lambert began to suffer a toothache. The ship's doctor prescribed painkillers, but they did little good. Once in Manila, both Lamberts contracted an unpleasant fever whose chief symptom was pain in all the joints and Marie Lambert had to delay her visit to a dentist. When she finally got to one, his drill slipped during treatment and drove through the nerve of her tooth, increasing her pain instead of curing it.
On the next lap of the voyage, which took the ship to Australia, Mr. Lambert in turn was prostrated with an agonizing toothache. While in Cairns, he went to a doctor, who told him there was nothing wrong with his teeth. In fact, the ache had stopped while he was at the dentist. It started again as soon as he returned to the cabin. Two days later he consulted another dentist and the same thing happened. Finally, in Brisbane, he desperately ordered a dentist to start pulling out his teeth and to keep pulling until the pain stopped. When the first tooth came out, the pain went away. However, it started again as soon as Lambert returned to the ship. He had not noticed that the Ho-Tei figurine was in his suitcase the time his toothache started.
In Sydney, the Lamberts left their luggage checked and the toothache ceased. On the voyage to New Zealand, the luggage was in their cabin only once, when they repacked; Lambert's toothache started again. When the luggage went into the hold, the pain stopped. While on shore in New Zealand, he had no toothache and there was only one bout of toothache on the continuation trip to Chile - when the Lamberts repacked their luggage in the cabin.
In the United States, the couple visited Lambert's mother, who was so delighted with Ho-Tei that they made her a present of the little god. When her excellent teeth started aching a few hours later, she handed back the gift saying that she felt it was 'bad medicine.' In spite of this hint about the statuette's ill effects on its owners, the Lamberts did not connect Ho-Tei with their own toothaches till they were on their way across the Atlantic to Britain. A fellow passenger who was interested in ivory borrowed the figurine overnight to show her husband. In the morning, she mentioned that she and her husband had both had toothaches. The Lamberts then thought about their toothaches, and realized that they had always occurred when Ho-Tei was in their cabin. Marie Lambert wanted to throw the statuette overboard at once but her husband was afraid that the god might retaliate by rotting every tooth in their heads. So they brought Ho-Tei back to London with them. Lambert took the figure to an oriental art shop and showed it to the Japanese manger, who immediately offered to buy it. Lambert explained that he could not take money for it and described the troubles it seemed to have caused. The manager sent for an old kimono-clad Japanese man and they both examined the statuette carefully. From what they then told him, Lambert gathered that his Ho-Tei had been a temple god. In the East, the statues of such gods are sometimes given 'souls' in the form of small medallions hidden inside them. That probably explained the ivory plug in the base of the figure. The old man placed Ho-Tei in a shrine at the end of the shop and lit joss sticks in front of it. Then, with an expression of awe, he bowed Lambert out of the shop.
This particular story was related by Colin Wilson in his book, Enigmas and Mysteries, and adds that C.J. Lambert derived some profit from his uncomfortable adventure. He recounted it in a travel book that sold well. Lambert could never bring himself to revisit the shop in which he had left Ho-Tei, however.
Lambert's understandable assumption was that a god had been taking revenge on unbelievers who had removed him from his temple. But is it possible for a god, or a priest following that god, to fix the power to cause harm into an inert substance? Skeptics take the view that all runs of misfortune are caused by the victims who unconsciously bring disaster upon themselves. We have all known people who seem to attract bad luck, we call them 'accident prone'. They usually appear to be suffering from plain, undeserved misfortune. Yet, we still have the feeling that there is some connection between their personality and their lack of good fortune. There may be something about the attitude of such people - a certain expectation that the worst will happen - that triggers off the accident. The subconscious attitude may itself be capable of causing the accident to occur. On the other hand, the subconscious attitude could affect the quality of attention the accident prone person brings to day-to-day behavior and could allow mishaps to occur more frequently.
Even with our limited knowledge of the power of the mind, the possibility cannot be ruled out. Many people would go as far as to call the consistently accident prone, 'accursed.'
